Boyero’s criticism of Julia Roberts and her latest film, ‘Witch Hunt’: “It doesn’t move me in the least” | Cinema: premieres and reviews

In his weekly review in EL PAÍS, Carlos Boyero has evaluated Julia Roberts’ latest film, witch hunt. An event that he describes as the “least attractive” of those there are, according to his tastes, and that also arrives at the cinemas in a “greedy” time in which he considers that there is an “overdose of premieres” and with the public eager to return to the theaters.

Boyero recognizes the success of its creator, Luca Guadagnino: “It enjoys critical fervor and Hollywood, always on the hunt for European talents that give it artistic prestige, has been at its feet for a long time.” Except Call Me By Your Namethe rest of his cinema “irritates” or “irritates” him. So for the critic, “the only initial attraction” of this film is that it stars Julia Roberts, who always – he points out – likes to observe and listen.

Of course, although he believes that she is “a convincing actress”, who has magnet, beauty and personality, in Witch Hunt He is indifferent: “It’s intense and mysterious. They’ve dyed her hair a strange color, they’re trying to make useless changes to her privileged physiognomy.” Although he insists that he will still receive the Oscar for these changes. “Those things, along with playing people with physical or mental illnesses, always make people fall in love at the acting Oscars. Julia Roberts here doesn’t move me in the slightest. Just like the rest of the plot and the characters,” he concludes.

Boyero adds that Guadagnino tries to provide suspense and raise questions about consensual or forced sexual relations at Yale University “but everything remains pretentious.” Regarding the characters, he is also forceful: “There is not a single character whose present or future worries me, something unforgivable in a cinema that aims to be psychological, complex, twisted, with edges, full of doubts.”

(Read Carlos Boyero’s full review here: Witch hunt: Not even Julia Roberts is saved from the shipwreck. And here, the reviews of the movies that are released this week)